May 2000

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

"We must not close our eyes to the fact that child soldiers are both victims and perpetrators. They sometimes carry out the most barbaric acts of violence. But no matter what the child is guilty of, the main responsibility lies with us, the adults. There is simply no excuse, no acceptable argument for arming children."
--Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Protecting Children from War: What the New International Agreement Really Means

Shannon McManimon works with the AFSC National Youth and Militarism Program.

In January, after six years of negotiations, a group of United Nations representatives unanimously approved a new agreement regarding the use of children as soldiers. Most news coverage of this agreement has lauded the United States and other working group members for protecting children. Although the agreement adds further protections for the world's children, what is too often glossed over is how it falls short, and how the United States helped block a stronger agreement.

Prior Provisions and Background

Today an estimated 300,000 children under age 18 are taking part in armed conflicts worldwide. Many more face recruitment or belong to armed forces not currently at war. Rädda Barnen, the Swedish children's rights organization, reports that during 1997-98, children participated in the armed conflicts of 36 countries; 27 of these conflicts involved children younger than 15.

For the past 10 years, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), UN representatives, and others have pushed to raise the minimum age for all forms of soldiering to 18. The current recognized standard, age 15, is specified in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), a comprehensive children's rights agreement. Fifteen years is out of step with the other provisions of the CRC, all of which define a child as anyone under 18, the age of maturity recognized by most countries. While it might be relatively easy to pass off a 12 year-old as 15, it would not be so easy to claim that he or she was 18, and would be nearly impossible to claim that a 9 year-old was 18.

Earlier UN efforts to raise age limits were unsuccessful, due largely to sustained opposition from the US government. Despite these setbacks, in 1998 UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared that UN military peacekeepers must be at least 18 years old, and preferably older than 21. Some governments changed (or considered changing) their policies to specify a higher minimum age for soldiering. In the United States, several police forces raised the minimum age for their officers beyond 18. Such policies reflect the view that occupations in which a person uses or is exposed to deadly force are not suitable for children.

Provisions of the Optional Protocol

The new UN agreement, known as the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, contains the following provisions:

• States must take "all feasible measures" to ensure that persons under 18 do not take direct part in combat.
• Persons under 18 shall not be "compulsorily recruited."
• Non-governmental armed groups cannot recruit or use children (whether voluntarily or involuntarily), and states must prevent and criminalize such use.
• States must set the minimum age for voluntary enlistment in government armies no younger than 16.
• States which permit voluntary enlistment by persons under 18 shall have safeguards such as parental consent and proof of age.
• States should take steps to help with the demobilization, reintegration, and rehabilitation of child soldiers used in violation of this agreement.

The agreement must first be approved by the UN General Assembly. It will take effect for participating governments three months after the 10th country completes its ratification process. Many of the provisions are encouraging, as they are more specific and go further than the old CRC. The new agreement provides more protections for young people between the ages of 15 and 17, those subject to forced recruitment, members of non-governmental armed groups, and children currently employed as soldiers.

The US reversal on holding up the consensus process is also significant. With this new protocol, the US government agreed, for what may be the first time, to change a national practice--to try to keep 17-year-olds out of combat--in order to support a human rights treaty. Overlooked in the rush to applaud, however, are weaknesses in the agreement itself, and problems growing out of the US government's role in the negotiations.

US Objections Relating to Voluntary Recruitment

The agreement fails to specify 18 as the minimum age for voluntary recruitment into governmental armed forces. Current US law permits 17-year-olds to enlist, and Pentagon officials say they need to recruit high school-aged people. The Pentagon has lobbied fiercely on this issue.

For the US to be a party to an agreement that specified a minimum voluntary recruitment age of 18, a change in US law, and potentially other aspects of policy, would have to occur. Thus, the new Optional Protocol allows the United States to join the international consensus without having to make significant changes in its recruitment practices.

The Pentagon makes a concerted effort to reach young people well before they turn 18. Government spending on pre- and para-military programs for youth has expanded dramatically in the last decade. There is a growing debate in Washington about whether pre-enlistment military-run youth programs are more effective recruitment tools than traditional recruiting programs. Programs such as the Civil Air Patrol, Project Focus, the Young Marines, and JROTC have as their primary targets people as young as elementary school age.

Proliferation of these pre- and para-military programs is likely to result in an increase of enlistment of 17-year-olds. Young people are often led to adopt an uncritical view of military service and warfare, coming to view soldiering as their best or only employment option, especially when faced with high pressure tactics from recruiters. Frequently, social and economic pressures lead young people to believe that they have no options other than the military; they join "voluntarily," under duress.

Some 95% of youngsters who agree to join the services do so through the Delayed Entry Program, a type of military "layaway plan" in which a recruit signs up and then enters the services months later. This program provides a pipeline of young recruits, most of whom do not know that they can leave this program with no negative consequences.

Additionally, the agreement does not specify a complete ban on the use of children in combat, but calls for "all feasible measures" to prevent their "direct" participation. In the 1990s US soldiers under 18 were deployed to war zones in the Gulf, Somalia, and Bosnia. What constitutes a "direct part in hostilities" is quite murky in today's wars. Such loopholes in the agreement leave much open to interpretation.

The US delegation's Michael Southwick described the compromises that led to the Optional Protocol as "effective, sensible, and practical." But is it "effective, sensible, and practical" to allow the politics and recruitment practices of the United States and a few other countries to take precedence over the protection of children?

Selective Agreement With Human Rights Treaties

The UN working group again bowed to US pressure by agreeing that the Optional Protocol could be signed and ratified by countries that have not ratified the parent treaty, CRC. (The United States and Somalia are the only two nations that have not done so.) This sets a dangerous precedent for other international agreements by allowing a powerful and influential country to pick and choose which provisions of international human rights laws it will adhere to.

This provision allows the United States to appear concerned for the well-being of children, while refusing to adopt a comprehensive children's rights agreement. For the United States to sign the Optional Protocol, no federal laws need be changed. The Pentagon would only be required to revise an administrative practice regarding the assignment of troops. Adoption of the parent treaty, the CRC, would most likely be problematic for the United States, as it would require numerous changes in laws and policies. For instance, the CRC prohibits the death penalty or life imprisonment for those who committed crimes while younger than 18; US criminal law allows children much younger than 18 to be tried and sentenced as adults.

A New Double Standard

Children's rights advocates welcome the addition to the protocol of a provision aimed at non-governmental armed groups, which often forcibly recruit children as young as seven or eight. But the Optional Protocol applies a more stringent standard to non-governmental groups than to governments. The agreement bans any form of participation in these groups for anyone under 18, and states that governments must take steps to prevent and criminalize the use of children as soldiers by non-governmental armed groups. At the same time, these governments themselves can recruit children under 18. UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy says, "It is disappointing that the Optional Protocol fails to apply to government military forces the same standards required of non-governmental armed groups."

The Path Ahead

Improved international standards for combatants can serve as a first step in addressing the child soldier problem only if their adoption is accompanied by an aggressive program of advocacy. Treaties alone will not end the use of children as soldiers. Strict enforcement measures, education, and international pressure are necessary. Renewed efforts are needed to correct the problems of existing agreements. More attention must be paid to closely related issues such as stopping the arms trade in light weapons, calling a halt to the training of military forces that use child soldiers, and addressing the training and indoctrination received by young people inside the military.

As Graça Machel, author of a UN study on war and children, writes, resistance to establishing 18 as a minimum for all soldiering "fails to take account of the extent to which effective protection of children requires unqualified legal and moral commitment to the principle that children have no part in armed conflict."

This aricle is a shortened version of one which appeared in AFSC's National Youth and Militarism Program's online newletter. For news briefs, action alerts, law and policy, resources, and articles on child soldiers, you can go to www.afsc.org/youthmil.htm or contact the Youth and Militarism Program, 1501 Cherry Street; Philadelphia, PA 19102; 215/241-7176; <youthmil@afsc.org> AFSC is a member of the national coalition, the US Campaign to STOP the Use of Child Soldiers, which maintains a list of speakers. While there is no specific legislation right now, you can write President Clinton, Secretary of Defense Cohen, Secretary of State Albright, and your Congresspeople, letting them know of your concern. Encourage them to support demobilization and reintegration of child soldiers and to end arms transfers and military aid to militaries or governments that use child soldiers.

Examples of CRC articles for which there is no US equivalent: